Sentence Examples

He thus superseded Warham, who was legatus flatus, in ecclesiastical authority; and though legates a latere were supposed to exercise only special and temporary powers, Wolsey secured the practical permanence of his office.

Holding fast then on the one hand to the individual as the only true substance, and on the other to the traditional definition of the genus as that which is predicated of a number of individuals (quod praedicatur de pluribus), Abelard declared that this definition of itself condemns the Realistic theory; only a name, not a thing, can be so predicated - not the name, however, as a flatus vocis or a collection of letters, but the name as used in discourse, the name as a sign, as having a meaning - in a word, not vox but sermo.

The common account of his philosophical position, that he reintroduced nominalism, which had been in decadence since the days of Roscellinus and Abelard, by teaching that universals were only flatus vocis, is scarcely correct.